Whether as entrepreneurs, caregivers, nurses, teachers, doctors, farmers, athletes, environmental activists, community leaders, or welders, women in the Pontiac are making their mark.
In celebrating International Women’s Day, it is imperative to take a moment not only to celebrate the gains women are making in what has long been a man’s world, but to acknowledge the challenges and hardships that mothers, wives, sisters, and daughters experience to get to where they are.
Being a woman can often mean celebrating your wins alone. It can be a silent climb to the top with many doubts, trials and tribulations along the way. People will underestimate your intelligence, assuming you “don’t know” or asking “how could a woman do that? That’s a man’s job.”
Like women everywhere, women of the Pontiac often have to part company with societal expectations and, at times, move beyond the cookie-cutter view of what a woman is supposed to be.
To get to this point, women have had to hold doors open for each other to go through. Without women advocating for the right to education, work and vote, the doors that are now open might have looked a lot different. For every woman who had to tear down barriers to get through, we are many who now get to walk right in.
With all the obstacles women already have to face on a daily basis to get ahead, consider the effect of a worldwide pandemic. While the world around us was changing in ways we didn’t understand, being a mother – which itself is a full-time job – meant becoming an educator too.
One of the lessons we can learn from the past two years is that everyone is doing their best. Let’s use the experience of the pandemic to empathize and create more safe spaces for women, to realize their full potential without having to jump through the hoops of prejudice, disrespect and misogyny.
In this week’s edition of THE EQUITY you will see brief profiles on just a few of the women of the Pontiac who are making a difference in our community. We welcome your letters with stories about the many others who contribute in a myriad of ways, large and small – people who are clearly not waiting around for empathy, but are getting out there, innovating and making things happen.
As Shirley Chisholm, the first black woman elected to the U.S. Congress, once said, “If they don’t give you a seat at the table, bring a folding chair.”
Zainab Al-Mehdar
